It is necessary for a printer employing an electrophotographic technology or a multifunction apparatus employing the electrophotographic technology to (i) stably drive a scanner motor and (ii) set a temperature of a fixing device to be within a predetermined range, so as to appropriately carry out a scanning process or a printing process. For this reason, a warm-up is carried out before, for example, the printing process is carried out, so that the fixing device has a temperature in the predetermined range when the printing process is started.
However, such a warm-up causes a user to wait until the warm-up is completed. In view of this, there has been known a technique for reducing a waiting time period of a user. According to the technique, in a case of, for example, a copying apparatus, the warm-up is triggered by an operation carried out by a user with respect to the copying apparatus, such as an input operation carried out via an operation panel, lifting up a cover of a scanner unit, or supplying a sheet to an auto feeder. Further, Patent Literature 1 discloses a method in which, before receiving print data from an external device, an image recording apparatus receives, from the external device, a specific command to warm up the image recording apparatus so that a warm-up of the image recording apparatus is started earlier than the receipt of the print data.
Furthermore, in recent years, a multifunction apparatus has been connected to a PC (personal computer) or the like via a communication network so as to carry out various processes. Specifically, the following technique has been developed. That is, a multifunction apparatus serves as a part of a total application system in such a manner that an application that is executable on an external information processing apparatus and a function of the multifunction apparatus operate in cooperation with each other (see Patent Literature 2).